2001

The year 2001 was another good year for Kapralova and the beginning of our partnership with the renowned publishing house Baerenreiter. In the next few years we will be collaborating on publishing several of Kapralova's works, starting with the composer's last and one of her best chamber compositions: Deux Ritournelles pour violoncelle et piano, op. 25.

Other important events of the last year included two documentaries on the composer's life and work, broadcast in May. Both featured some of the best music by Kapralova, recorded exclusively for the projects. First of the documentaries, a 54-minute Czech Television film Last Concertino by Marie Kucerova's team (Studio Brno), made an important contribution to Kapralova research by premiering the composer's Concertino for Violin, Clarinet and Orchestra, op. 21.
This remarkable work was reconstructed for the occasion by Brno professors Milos Stedron and Leos Faltus.
The second, a 50-minute radio documentary for Canada's national broadcaster featured Kapralova's North American premiere of Variations sur le Carillon, op. 16, performed by renowned Canadian pianist Antonin Kubalek.
The documentary was written and produced for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) by Denise Ball, in collaboration with the Society's members Karla Hartl and Antonin Kubalek.
Kapralova's music was also broadcast by Czech Radio 3 and public radio networks in Chicago, Eastern New York, Western New England, and Southeastern United States. Finally, Kapralova's Grotesque Passacaglia was released in a world premiere on compact disc, thanks to Tomas Visek, a brilliant pianist from Prague. His critically acclaimed CD entitled Srdce na Vysocine features also works by Kapralova's contemporaries Bohuslav Martinu, Vitezslav Novak,Vaclav Kapral, Jaroslav Kricka, Otakar Sin, and Jaroslav Jezek.

Kapralova was also a topic at two international conferences last year: the International Conference on Music Suppressed by the Third Reich, organized by the University of Virginia in March; and the Second Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music, organized by the Goldsmiths College at the University of London, in June. The former programmed Kapralova's April Preludes in the event's gala concert (performed by Kuang-Hao Huang); the latter included a lecture on Kapralova's life and work (by Matthias Wurz).

Kapralova's art songs were listed among the key Czech vocal repertoire in a groundbreaking guide Singing in Czech: A Guide to Czech Lyric Diction and Vocal Repertoire, by Dr. Timothy Cheek of University of Michigan, published by Scarecrow Press in May.

Articles promoting Kapralova's life and music appeared last year in Il Manifesto (Claudio Canal), New Homeland (Bedrich Prochazka), and Lidove noviny (Barbora Osvaldova). Articles about the reconstruction and recording of Kapralova's Concertino, op. 21, appeared in MF Dnes (Eva Zajickova, Lubos Marecek, and Halka Friedmannova) and in the journal of the Czech Music Information Centre - Czech Music (Erika Fronkova).
Reviews of the composer's music were published in: New York Times (Allan Kozinn), IFSM Newsletter 2001/1 (Michael Haas and Erik Levi), and Nuova e Nostra (Marco del Vaglio).

Finally, the year 2001 was important also for a number of public performances of Kapralova's music world-wide. The key event was the performance of Military Sinfonietta by Ronald Corp and New London Orchestra in London at the end of the year.
The performance marked the 63rd anniversary of the work's British premiere by the BBC Orchestra at the 1938 ISCM Festival in London. Other important events included the New York premiere of Kapralova's String Quartet by the Hawthorne String Quartet from Boston and its Luxembourg premiere by the Kapralova Quartet from Prague. The string quartet was performed most often last year, followed by Kapralova's violin and piano pieces and her art songs.

women in music

Last year we designed a website promoting the Kapralova Quartet - a women ensemble founded in 1995 in Prague under the name of Venus Quartet Prague. In 2001 the group changed its name to pay a tribute to Kapralova. The lead personality of the Kapralova Quartet is Rita Cepurcenko, a graduate of the Leningrad Conservatory and Academy of Music. The ensemble studied quartet performance with Prof. Bretislav Novotny, first violinist of the excellent Quartet of the City of Prague. The unique combination of the celebrated Russian school of string playing and the traditional Czech approach to quartet performance has distinguished the ensemble from other quartets; and, today, the ensemble ranks as one of the foremost Czech quartets.

Our online resources on women in music now also include an extensive bibliography (author: Eugene Gates), several databases of women composers (compiled by Karla Hartl), information about the life and work of Czech opera singer Emmy Destinn (in collaboration with Dr. Jan Kralik of the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences), a page dedicated to Czech composer Slava Vorlova (by Karla Hartl) and a catalogue of women composers' materials held by the Czech Music Information Centre in Prague (compiled by Marie Harvat). Our website www.kapralova.org continues to attract visitors and receive recognition for excellence from important institutions, most recently from the BBC Online that listed the site among their recommended classical music links.